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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27059362">Become One</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelGirl/pseuds/KestrelGirl'>KestrelGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Eye Trauma, Gen, Graphic Description, Illustrations, Loss of Identity, Mind Control, Mordrem (Guild Wars), Prompt Fic, Short, Sylvari (Guild Wars)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:07:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27059362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelGirl/pseuds/KestrelGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An ending for Morwenna, and a beginning she never wanted.</p><p>Contains depictions of body horror and eye trauma aftermath.</p><p>Written for the Tyria's Library Halloween event. (Prompt: Body Horror)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Become One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I sense change.</p><p>I can still see... sort of. But mostly I hear, and smell. Today the air reeks of death.</p><p>Mordremoth is long gone, an empty space in my mind. But the jungle shaped me, and shapes me even now. It will never free me.</p><p>I don’t know what will happen next… but I have an urge to follow the scent.</p><p>
  
</p><p>I follow the call for what must be days, through tangled wreckage and towering old growth. It comes from deep within - near the dragon’s unbeating heart. </p><p>It leads me to a creature, a fetid wolf of vine and bone and petal, the image in which my master remade me.</p><p>I can’t resist its pull.</p><p>
  <b>Come closer.</b>
</p><p>There’s a growl ringing in my head, a voice I haven’t heard in… how long? I don’t want to know.</p><p>
  
</p><p>The beast kneels. A signal, to climb on its back. </p><p>It is a calm thing, this wolf. I can touch it all over, explore it with my not-eyes, feel the smoothness of its skull with thin fingers. </p><p>
  <b>Savor it. </b>
</p><p>I run my hand along the ribs of vines that enclose its emptiness. I learn every inch, from where I sit atop it: lithe paws, florid petals, a stinking, pollen-coated tongue split every which way.</p><p>
  
</p><p>It’s so awkward, but so… good. Like it was meant to be. I watch the sun set and rise and set and rise. The wolf does not move. I realize it is… growing. To meet me. And I am growing to meet it. I feel no hunger, no pain - nothing, really. Only the tickle of roots anchoring themselves within my bark.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <b>Think, for a moment. </b>
</p><p>
  <b>What remains?</b>
</p><p>What… am I still? My sight, my body, my very breath, all given to a dead master. Is there even Morwenna, anymore?</p><p>How long has it been, since I used the voice that isn’t mine? It is ragged, covered in tendrils. But it tears free of its prison, as I cry for something that… maybe never was.</p><p>I lament, for a long, long time. The vine-voice becomes weary. Sobs become barks. Wails become howls. The wolf waits, ever patient.</p><p>The sun and moon circle me, round and round, each chasing the other’s tail. There is naught left in me. No dragon to fuel me. Only the damp, lonely jungle.</p><p>For a moment I recall the life that Mordremoth let me leave behind. I came from a tree, so much like the blighting trees that surround me now. I left its embrace and wandered, until I found my purpose here. To serve, as part of something greater.</p><p>But to inflict limitless suffering, I had to endure it myself… it occurs to me that that happened right here, amidst the towering pods that once manufactured armies. I shudder and whine as the memories flood back, of each brutal step. The horrid pustules, the suffocating leystone that claimed my throat, Diarmid’s single, final punishment - and through everything, the excruciating… <em> mind-breaking </em> pain.</p><p>
  <b>And you are better for it.</b>
</p><p>Am I?… </p><p>What was I thinking, again? I should be on my way… but why can’t I move? Ah… my legs… are part of the beast now. There’s this crawling feeling. Up to my waist.</p><p>All gone now. <em> Morwenna </em> gone now.</p><p>
  <b>Accept it.</b>
</p><p>I close my empty eyes, and my not-eyes. The beast howls now, rearing up beneath me.</p><p>
  
</p><p>I am spent - I collapse. Every bit of my heartwood aches… everything I’ve done has caught up to me. The wolf’s winding, twisting ribcage opens, accepting me within. I don’t struggle; I don’t have it in me anymore. Never had it in me.</p><p>My hand is… in acid, and the rest of this body sears, ripples, changes - <b>no longer yours, was never yours </b> - and all is agony. I twist and writhe, in ways no being should. Something snaps… and something else, and something still else. I understand now why I am this broken… this <em> hideous. </em></p><p>
  <strong>It was meant to end like this.</strong>
</p><p>My legs were on the wolf’s flanks. They remain on its flanks, spasming, stretching, hanging by threads. But our backs meet, crown to crown, spine to spine, tail to bony tail. My sap fills its hollow veins as I seem to <em> dissolve </em>… at some point our voices, our growth-choked throats merge, and I rejoin the keening cry, as my arms wrench into its paws… </p><p>My head tips back, and back, and back - my body <em> screams </em> for air, but there is nowhere for it to go, for the ley-growth has been ripped free… </p><p>The pain ebbs, and my not-eyes see only a pulsing tangle… </p><p>And then there is darkness.</p>
<hr/><p>And then there is light, through a skeletal frame. A caustic tang, in a long snout.</p><p>Can I… never rest?</p><p>Just let Morwenna go… home. To Mother. Please.</p><p>No ears anymore, yet the jungle whispers around me. No hands to dry the tears - no tears at all. Only paw and claw and an empty skull. Just like how the dragon took everything from Morwenna, before. </p><p>Somewhere in this shell… there is a voice, a roar. Still not Morwenna’s. Will never be Morwenna’s.</p><p>What <em> is </em> Morwenna?</p><p>No sylvari. No tree-child. <b>Only dragon-child.</b> The wolf is Morwenna now.</p><p>There is nothing more.</p><p>
  
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